For the Sharks, Tuesday night’s overtime loss to Calgary had a frustratingly familiar look. Another one-goal lead slipped through their gloves in the final minute of a game.

It marked the fourth time this season they’ve given up a goal inside the last 60 seconds of regulation play, leading to a loss.

And nobody needs to remind the players.

“It’s happened a lot, and I hate that,” defenseman Marc-Edouard Vlasic said. “The coach puts you out there in the last minute because he expects you to do the job. It really hurts to give up late goals like that.”

While the reasons for each of those losses are different – ranging from unlucky bounces of the puck to mental errors – there was a clear consensus of what went wrong Tuesday.

“There’s a line in hockey that you play to win and you can’t play not to lose,” veteran Jeremy Roenick said. “Well, in those last few minutes, we played not to lose. We allowed them to take it to us. We have to maintain our killer attitude, and we didn’t in the last three minutes.”

The Sharks put together a superior performance – out-shooting Calgary 43-18 – and held a 3-2 lead late. But then they wasted the effort at the end.

A Jonathan Cheechoo delay-of-game penalty gave the Flames a two-man advantage after they pulled goalie Miikka Kiprusoff. When Patrick Rissmiller failed to clear the puck, Dion Phaneuf scored the tying goal with 49.8 seconds left.

In overtime, Jarome Iginla got the game-winner for the Flames.

“It’s disappointing because it shouldn’t be happening,” right wing Mike Grier said Tuesday night. “It’s been too many times where we give up goals late to tie games only to lose it later. It’s not acceptable for a team of our caliber.”

That’s why before Wednesday’s practice, Grier briefly addressed his teammates. He told them to take away the positives from the loss and make sure there’s no hangover going into tonight’s game against Edmonton – the Sharks’ last home appearance before an eight-game, 16-night trip.

“Hopefully we can learn from this, and that’s why we talked about it for a few minutes,” Grier said. “This is a pretty big game for us before we head out on the trip.”

Coach Ron Wilson was just as unhappy as anyone about the loss. But he sharply disagreed with the idea of trying to construct a larger trend of the Sharks being unable to close out games.

“If you look around the league, every team has given up goals in the last minute,” Wilson said. “It’s part of hockey. You’re going to blow games sometimes and lose ones you shouldn’t. You’re also going to win games you shouldn’t. That’s just sports.”

What does concern him, though, is the specific mistakes his team made against the Flames. The Sharks, he said, stopped fore-checking and pursuing the puck up the ice. They paid dearly for that lack of aggressiveness.

“I never saw any desperation on the other team’s part, but we allowed them back in,” Wilson said. “We should have snuffed them right out. The way they were playing, it looked like they thought the game was over. But we got a little passive and it blew up in our face.”

With the Sharks locked in a heated battle in the Pacific Division with two of the NHL’s hottest teams – Dallas and Anaheim – each point is precious. They gave away one Tuesday.

Also, each time San Jose surrenders a late lead, it dredges up bitter memories of last spring’s playoff collapse against Detroit. The Sharks were 33.1 seconds from taking a 3-1 lead in the second-round series. Instead, the Red Wings tied the score, won in overtime and then took the next two games.

“There has to be a mentality where we prevent this from happening in the future,” Roenick said. “It has to hurt deep. Then we have to figure out how to make sure that doesn’t happen again in the last five minutes.”